Everyone knows that cheetahs are the fastest animals on land but a recent study has revealed that their speed is not the key to their hunting prowess, it is actually their agility and ability to change directions and stop suddenly that makes them such a scourge to antelopes, according to The New York Times.
Dr. Alan M. Wilson, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, reveals in a paper he wrote for the journal Nature that cheetahs don't even use their much hyped speed while hunting.
"Cheetahs don't actually go very fast when they're hunting," Wilson said. "The hunt is much more about maneuvering, about acceleration, about ducking and diving to capture the prey."
In order to learn how the cheetahs hunt Wilson and his colleagues designed a special collar, a collar that took ten years to perfect. The collar is solar powered with an accelerometer, a gyroscope and GPS, according to The New York Times.
After observing the cheetahs hunt researchers found that they very rarely made use of their abilities to reach high speeds of up to 60 miles per hour; instead the cheetahs' average speed was 33 miles per hour while hunting, according to the BBC.
Perhaps the most amazing thing the cheetahs showed was that they were able to increase their speed by almost 7 miles per hour in a single stride. Even more remarkably a cheetah can decrease its speed 9 miles per hour in a single stride. These two skills combined enable cheetahs to make incredibly tight turns while chasing prey, according to The New York Times.
"Its muscles are very powerful," Wilson said. "They're arranged in a way that gives it the ability to accelerate very quickly."
Cheetahs are also equipped with big claws that allow them to grab into the ground when making turns, if it weren't for their claws they would go sliding all over the place while trying to turn.
Wilson also studied the characteristics that make horses and racing dogs such good runners, the two animals are the closest thing the cheetah has to competition for the land speed record. What made the cheetah stand out over the other animals wasn't just their speed but the other skills they showed.
"The cheetah is way out there ahead of those animals," Wilson said. "It's really the all-around athlete, the all-around pursuit predator."
An amazing video of the cheetah in action can be seen here.
